Welcome to Professional and Technical Services (PTS) – experts in chemical disinfection for infection prevention. Our goal is to educate and provide you the latest resources related to cleaning and disinfection of environmental surfaces, medical devices and hands. As specialists in disinfectant chemistries, microbiology, environmental cleaning and disinfection, facility assessments and policy and procedure creation we are dedicated to helping any person or facility who uses chemical disinfectants.

Our commitment to providing chemical disinfectant education is more than business, it is a passion.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Fungal coated Fomites

When I started in the infection prevention world 15 years
ago, fomites (or the patient environment) was still being debated in terms of
the contribution to infection transmission.Most would agree that the potential role of fomites in the transmission
of disease required further study.No
one was really ready to take a stance.

In 2002, Infection
Control Today (ICT) published an article “Fomites’
Role in Disease Transmission is Still Up for Debate” concluding that the transmission of infectious diseases from fomites is still being contested in
the infection control community, with no conclusive decision emerging from
clinical studies. Dr. Weber and Dr. Rutala
agreed that the key concept in considering the hospital environment as an
infectious hazard for patients is to find definitive proof that inanimate
objects played a role in transmitting in human disease.In order to support fomites as a causative
agent several areas needed to be proven, including:

- Proof that an organism can
survive after inoculation on to the fomite

- Proof that a pathogen can be
cultured from fomites in use

- Proof that a pathogen can proliferate on the
fomite

- Proof that at least some small part of acquisition of infection cannot
be accounted for by other methods of transmission

- Peer reviewed studies showing an association between exposure to the
contaminated fomite and infection

Today, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all drank the
Kool-Aid and believe (or at least agree) that pathogens can be transmitted from
fomites and that fomites have been directly related to outbreaks.Unfortunately, while we know this, our
ability to ensure that fomites do not lead to transmission continues to plague
us.Case in point is a recent
study published by a group of researchers from the UK looking at what is
being touted as being one of the
largest outbreaks of Candida auris.In investigating the outbreak, researchers
found that axillary thermometers (armpit thermometers) had been used in 57 of
the 66 patients (86%) of the patients infected with C. auris. While C. auris was
rarely detected in the general ward environment, researchers were able to culture samples from the medical equipment and see it on the surface of thermometers
using a scanning electron microscope.The only way the outbreak was controlled was removing the thermometers
from use.

This outbreak is not the only outbreak associated with
thermometers.Similar to the focus over
the last several years of ensuring that the environment is being effectively
cleaned and disinfected through verification programs, so
too is the need to have programs and processes in place to ensure that
multi-use patient care equipment is being properly and effectively cleaned and
disinfected between use. Infectious pathogens are opportunistic.If we let our guards down, they will find a
way to proliferate, contaminate and infect our patients.